Day 3 Easy Rider

Well didn't make 5.00am but up at 7.00 few more pictures of the beautiful little village we have slept in on a lake.

Then excitement as the Elephant turned up to take us for an hour ride around the village and through the lake.
My first time on an elephant, thought of you every step it took Mark !!!! Haha you didn't think I would get you a real one.

After that it was pack up again and back on the road, Lee is my driver and Joe is Jess's. Two of the most patient men I have come across.
It was a long ride today which was taking us to Dalat our final stop. The roads were not good and for some reason broken rocks where thrown on the road in many places, so made it very dangerous. But apparently it is to be tarmac soon.
We visited Elephant Waterfall, went to a silk factory and saw how they grow the cocoons boil them then unravel to make silk.
Much of the countryside from Nha Trang to Dalat is coffee growing land which has been making the area very affluent in places. Some of the houses are quite big, coffee beans are laid out everywhere to dry, gardens, road, fields any area each family can find. More land you have the more money you make.
Driving through it smells like Jasmine that's the flower part, no smell of coffee. Even when we saw the dryed beans being put through a machine to remove the outer shell. who thinks of all these things over the years.
Coffee here is very strong, they wouldn't call what we drink coffee.

The day ended in this strange building called the Crazy house, built back in 1990 by lady called Hang Nga who's father was Ho Chi Mings successor.
It's an odd building maize of steps in a sort of tree that looks like it's been around years growing oddly that's the only way I can describe it. You can stay the night as it has rooms done in different themes of animals it would be odd to sleep there though I reckon.

I was glad to get of the bike tonight as with all the bumpy roads and 7 hours on and of, after a straight 4 hours couldn't walk for the first ten minutes. Very painful, oh yes we did have two mishaps over the 3 days.
Day one when it was raining and we had those great big rain coats on, Lee had stopped as we were going for lunch, but his foot got caught in the bottom of the mac, he tried best he could but with the weight of me and the luggage I went flying, thank god for crash helmets. Smacked my head and jolted my hip but okay.
Then today day 3 we hit one of the broken bricks wrong, it could have been worse but just ended up with bruised shin, and my foot caught the exhaust. Just unlucky, problem was also as I'm not agile I couldn't move. Lee felt really bad, it had never happened to him before. Must say I lost my nerve a little on the bumpy roads. But survived with not much damage done.

Lee has brought us back to his house tonight as Jess is booked on a bus tonight at midnight making her way back to Cambodia, so we are waiting now for the time to pass. I am staying here the night as I am having another day here tomorrow to see Dalat, yes on the motorbike.

He is so good most would just drop you at the bus station, he is knackered
They do weeks with only a day of most the time. Shame is young ones don't appreciate or even think about what others do. !!! Think it's because as parents we do it, so it's just part of life.

So I'm leaving 16th on the late afternoon bus back to Saigon, making my way to Cambodia again.
Then on the17th hoping to get a three day boat trip down The Mekong River arriving in PhnomPenh on the night of the 19th. That's the plan

Once again this will get posted a day late, as no Internet again.